


Getting To Know You

by vtn



Category: Green Day, The Network (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-01
Updated: 2006-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 17:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viktor and Adrienne get to know each other better, and get to know themselves better in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting To Know You

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an RP universe I had with [borrowedphrases](http://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedphrases). The basic gist of what you need to know is that Billie and Fink get together, and their former partners Svengali and Adrienne end up taking comfort in each other.

I am kissing Adrienne—no, that’s the way it used to be— _we are kissing_ in front of a museum. I’ve never been young and in love until now, and because no man who has seen the things I have seen is young, I am still doing ‘young and in love’ as an adult. And I know that she is too, not only because she’s spoken of it to me but also because only adults pick places of education to have spontaneous moments of passion. Because only adults feel passionate about art and history the way we do, and the few young people I have seen do so are simply adults who happen to have only been on this Earth for eight years or however long. And we are kissing now, in front of the Middle Ages art museum in the city that I was born in.

I mention this moment because it is this moment when she says:

“Viktor. Isn’t it funny?”

“Isn’t what funny?” I slide my arm down her back, my index and middle fingers touching the lowest ridge of her spine. 

“I didn’t even know you were born in Cologne until this morning. But I still know enough about you to know you were thinking the exact same thing as I was when I kissed you.” She cocks her head. “When we kissed,” corrects herself. 

I lean in again, kissing her temple, smelling her hair as I brush it behind her ear. She curls in to me tighter, and I know as her hand runs along my chest that tonight we will make love, as we have every night since we left California. Once again, I am aware that though I am as passionate as a young person—I would be lying if I said a part of me was not always yearning to have her curled into me this way with us the only two people in the world, our bare skin touching and our passions mingling—I carry with me the adult realization that lust is only a fraction of love. That this moment and those moments are equally positioned in a hierarchy. 

Another thing we know all too well about each other is every inch of the other’s body, and the feeling of my arms around her, of her lips resting on mine. But she’s right. We are strangers still.

“Where were you born?” I ask her, stealing one tiny kiss from her lips.

“Mm, talk dirty to me, baby,” she says with a sarcastic edge, playfully running a hand through my hair. “And Minnesota.” And she _does_ always know what I’m thinking. 

“Your turn,” I say, and we step to the side to avoid a pigeon hell-bent on reaching a child’s dropped ice cream cone. In a pigeon’s grand hierarchy of things, American couples’ ‘moments’ are serfs to the ruler that is free junk food. It’s not the only pigeon we’ve had to sidestep today. 

But then, I enjoy dancing with her.

“Why do you wear trenchcoats?”

“Once in a shop, a boy was trying one on in a mirror. He laughed and said someone like me could pull it off, but not him. I am a proud man.” She laughs, and quotes at me.

“‘Some are born great, others achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.’”

Despite what you might think, I am not so mature as not to whisper into her ear that she has had greatness thrust upon her every evening for the past nine days and I do hope that she is astute enough to be aware of that. And she is not too mature to whisper back that ‘upon’ is only the right preposition for five of those evenings and then lightly graze my ear with her fingernails.

“Why do you have your hair in dreadlocks?” I ask her. The game is not yet over.

“I felt fragile among the punk kids in Oakland, even with my steel-toed boots on. Now I see me when I look in the mirror. Why do you like red velvet so much?” This question would be difficult to answer correctly to anyone else but Adrienne.

“I lost my virginity backstage in a theatre that had red velvet curtains.” 

“Naughty.” We do the pigeon foxtrot again, and then she kisses me (which is the correct phrasing in this situation) and makes a tiny movement of her hips against mine.

“What would you like to teach me?” is my next question.

“Stupid question. How to live. You, same question.”

“Stupid question. Same answer. Have you ever dined by candlelight?”

“The power used to go out all the time in the old apartment—” There’s a catch in her voice. I run the back of my hand through her hair.

“You must learn to say their names again. I am not afraid of them.” Breathing in, she starts again.

“The power used to go out all the time in the old apartment where Billie Joe, Mike and Tré lived with their friends, and we would light candles from the drug store. Thirty-five cents for three of them. Is there anything you _are_ afraid of?”

“Losing my senses.” I mean my senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, but there’s a double meaning there that I catch all too late, and we both find it more than a little funny.

“You’ve already done that.” 

“What is one place you’ve always wanted to visit?”

“France.” She smirks. We changed planes at an airport in Marseille. Easy enough, we are both thinking, to delay the flight to accommodate a few days spent exploring. “You, same question.” I start to say I don’t know. But I do, actually, although it’s not something I’ve spent a great deal of energy thinking about.

“Switzerland.”

“Do you have _any_ idea how easy that will be?” She grins and twirls gaily. I catch her hand in mine. “Do we _ever_ have to go back to America?”

“You’ve asked two questions out of turn,” I admonish her. “But yes I do.” I pull her close to me, the rush of a monumental decision sweeping over me. “And no. We don’t.”

“For some reason, I knew you were going to say that.” There’s a fire blazing in her eyes. I know that look, and I know exactly what it means. I’m not sure, however, if I could describe it, in English or my native German. “Anyway, I suppose you get to go twice, now, since I did after all.”

“What do you want for lunch, and who is paying?”

“French. And I am.”

We make adult decisions, but we walk to the restaurant hand in hand because we’re young and in love.


End file.
